Metro Transit Police investigating anti-gay Green Line attack
Victim was kicked and beaten by a dozen teenagers after intervening to stop a robbery
Metro Transit Police are investigating the beating of an openly gay Gaithersburg man and his partner at the hands of a group of teenagers aboard a Metro train last month. However, The Washington Post reports the incident is not being classified as a hate crime at this time.
Calvin Lawrence and his partner, Joseph Cowart, were punched, kicked and called “faggot” repeatedly after they attempted to intervene in the attempted robbery of a 14-year-old boy. The couple was riding the Green Line home from a holiday party in West Hyattsville, shortly after 1 a.m. on Nov. 22. After leaving the Fort Totten station, Cowart noticed that the boy was being robbed of his iPhone, had a bloody nose, and didn’t have shoes on.
When Cowart attempted to intervene, the attackers began mimicking his hand movement, which has been limited since he suffered a stroke in 2004. They then aimed their jeers at his sexual orientation, rather than his disability. He tried to use the train’s emergency call box to explain to the operator that a teenager was being robbed. About 20 other people were in the car, but didn’t do anything to intervene.
Lawrence signaled to Cowart that they should leave the train car or get off at the next stop. But when Cowart began to leave, one teenage girl grabbed him by his sweatshirt and pulled him down to the floor, where about a dozen youths began punching and kicking him while screaming anti-gay slurs.
The attack eventually stopped at the Shaw-Howard University station when Lawrence yelled at a female Metro worker, who alerted the driver to stop the train. As a result of the attack, Cowart was hospitalized and suffered head trauma that set back his recovery from the 2004 stroke, Lawrence says. He adds that Cowart has suffered from panic attacks and will have to undergo months of physical therapy.
Metro Transit Police did not classify the incident as a hate crime in their report, despite the taunting and jeering aimed at Cowart due to his disability and sexual orientation.
“The mere fact that during the commission of a crime that you get called a name doesn’t necessarily make it a bias motivation,” Metro spokesman Dan Stessel told the Post. “A bias motivation can be added by prosecutors when the case is papered if the evidence will support it.”
Stessel also says the train operator acted appropriately, because in some instances, a train driver will not stop, but rather continue to a location where the police can intercept the train. He says the driver acknowledged the call and alerted police at 1:18 a.m. Five minutes later, officers arrived on scene at the Shaw-Howard station. Stessel says the investigation remains open. Multiple people matching the descriptions of the suspects were stopped after the attack, but none were positively identified.
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